Beach-goers dispute Trillo’s description of campaign yacht mishap

Monday

To support his independent bid for governor, Joe Trillo decided to use a yacht with a huge campaign banner so more Rhode Islanders would know who he was.

What happened Sunday off of the beach in Charlestown may have helped his name recognition, but at a steep price.

Lady M, the 65-foot yacht Trillo was operating, hit a rock and became disabled off the Charlestown Breachway, causing an hours-long scene and a Coast Guard rescue as the yacht took on water. The yacht’s blaring music cut out, and campaign banners touting Trillo for Governor were yanked up after the accident, witnesses said.

Now, Trillo’s boat is in for about 10 days of repairs, he said. Meanwhile, his campaign is getting dinged, too, as his version of events differs from those of witnesses on the beach, who said he got dangerously close to the shore.

The witnesses’ version was echoed by people commenting on the U.S. Coast Guard’s Facebook page; a video posted on Twitter Sunday showed Trillo’s boat much closer to shore than Trillo described traveling during the incident.

They are wrong, says Trillo, who focused Monday on thanking the Coast Guard and other agencies.

“The first responders in this case did a great job,” Trillo said. “It’s the first time after thousands of miles of navigation that I ever called the Coast Guard.”

Trillo, a former Republican state representative, is running as an independent in hopes of defeating Gov. Gina Raimondo in the November general election.

Trillo said he was about a half a mile from the beach in water that nautical charts said would be about 14 feet deep when he hit the underwater rock formation off of the Charlestown Breachway, where two jetties come out. The rock formation was not marked on navigation charts put out by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is what caused the accident, he said.

He said he will eventually work with NOAA to update the charts for other boaters, but added in an interview that for right now, “That’s the last thing on my mind.”

Trillo said that officials on scene corroborated that the NOAA charts were inaccurate, but in an interview, he said he did not know what agency the officials were from. Several agencies came to the scene, he said. NOAA did not respond to a request for comment. The Coast Guard said that because it didn’t happen in a navigable channel, it wouldn’t investigate.

The boat was then dead in the water, Trillo said. When it originally hit the rock, he said, it was past the jetty, but ended up getting pushed much closer to the beach because it drifted while disabled until the anchor stopped it.

Cheryl Burgess was visiting the beach from Connecticut and said she watched the scene unfold. Relayed Trillo’s version of events, Burgess said: “Oh, no no no no. Oh no. Nope.”

Burgess said the yacht came around the Charlestown Breachway and came toward the beach — motoring, not drifting.

“We were like, wow, look at the size of that thing,” Burgess said.

The boat then turned toward Point Judith, unfurling a banner and starting to play music for a parallel run along the beach, Burgess said. In less than a minute, though, she heard a loud bang when it hit rock, she said. She saw the boat drop anchor, and it didn’t move again, Burgess said.

“Exactly where those pictures are taken, it didn’t move,” Burgess said. “They dropped anchor right there.”

The whole experience, Burgess said, was unwelcome.

“This is like getting a robocall,” Burgess said. “You expect to relax and listen to the surf, all of a sudden you get this. I go to the beach to relax and not listen to politics and everything else.”

Paulette Heft, a Chester, Connecticut, resident, has been going to the beach there for years, and said she never sees even little fishing boats that close to the shore, much less 65-foot yachts. The one she saw on Sunday with a Joe Trillo banner was playing very loud music.

“I can’t emphasize how loud,” Heft said. “It jolted us off the blanket.”

Many people turned to look to see the music, and then saw the music stop after the boat hit rocks that anyone familiar with that area knows are there, Heft said.

From there, it stayed until the first responders came — boats zooming in, aircraft flying overhead.

“It didn’t drift,” Heft said. “That’s where it hit.”

Stephanie Peabody, of Massachusetts, said she comes to that beach every weekend. She arrived shortly after the accident occurred, she said, and people there told her it cut in toward the shoreline and hit the rocks close to the beach.

There are rocks in the shallow area of the water, where people swim. They’re visible at low tide, Peabody said. Nautical charts published by NOAA shows several obstacles in the shallow part of the water there.

“He was in too far,” Peabody said.

Trillo, meanwhile, said he’s an experienced boater and knows what he’s talking about, rejecting other accounts of the incident.

“It’s totally wrong,” Trillo said.

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